Table 1.

Possible signs and symptoms of some cognitive impairments, detectable with the preliminary Neuropsychological Examination (NPE).

Cognitive domain	Neuropsychological disorder		Signs and symptoms
Attention	Selective attention impairments		Internal and external distractibility, attentive captures.
	Vigilance-sustained attention impairments		Drowsiness, attentive fluctuations.
Memory	Anterograde amnesia		Oblivion of recent information, perseveration in discourse.
	Retrograde amnesia		Oblivion of past information on recalling autobiographical data, job information, and the medical history.
Pre-frontal functions	Dysexecutive disorders		Poor or diminished insight, lack of the theme of discourse, perseveration of speech or action components, simplified or confused mental tracking or reasoning.
	Adynamic syndrome		Reduction of verbal or behavioral initiative, mutism, lack of spontaneity, diminished empathy.
	Dysinhibited behavior		Iperorality, jocularity, social inappropriateness, hyperactivity, diminished emotional control.
Speech and language	Aphasia	Dysfluency	Effortful articulation, speech lacking of normal prosodic variations, reduced speech output.
		Phonemic deficit	Phonemic paraphasia, conduites d'approche.
		Syntactic deficit	Simplified syntactic clauses, telegraphic speech output, omission/substitution morphological endings.
		Lexical-semantic deficit	Word-finding problems, circumlocutions, semantic paraphasia.
		Comprehension deficit	Answers are inconsistent with questions, necessity to repeat a same question in absence of hearing loss.
Visuospatial abilities	Topographical disorientation		Impaired orientation in hospital unit.
	Neglect	Motor	Patient does not utilize a limb, which adopts a passive, anomalous posture.
		Personal	Lateralized dressing apraxia: e.g., arm of patient's glasses are misplaced upon one of his ears.
		Extrapersonal	Head and eyes exploration movements are limited, shortened or defective toward a region of space, patient does not answer questions when prompted from a side of his space.
Other cognitive functions	Optic ataxia		Misreaching errors trying to grasp objects on the table.
	Gaze apraxia		Abnormal eye and head movements during attempted changes in gaze, fixed gaze, etc.
	Alien hand syndrome		Anomalous posture of arms, levitation, intermanual conflict.
	Ambient dependence syndrome		Echopraxis, echolalia, imitation behavior, utilization behavior.
	Frontal memory disorders		Confabulations, interference, errors concerning the source of the memories.